The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(22)

“I’m sorry,” I heard her moan again and again, and I shook my head and stroked her hair.

“Shh,” I whispered. “No, it’s all right. You have done nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all.”

Not like me, I thought. Considering I watched Emma murder Ben in cold blood, and now I’m lying to his daughter about it. I did my best to shove aside my self-loathing for a few minutes and focus on Melanie instead.

Her sobs turned into little choking wheezes, and then they finally faded into silence.

She slowly pulled away from me. Her makeup was caked down her cheeks like an oil slick. It stained my shirt in damp smears. She hiccuped and ran her hand under her nose.

“I bet I look like shit, huh?” she said, trying to smile.

“I’ve seen worse. Bet you feel a little better, though.”

“Yeah,” she said, sniffing. “Little bit.”

“Tell you what. You go get some sleep. I’ll crash here on the couch tonight. If you wake up in the night, you want to talk, you need anything, you come get me. Okay?”

She nodded quickly. “Okay.”

Melanie scurried off to clean her face up and blow her nose. I waited until she was out of earshot and dialed Caitlin’s number. When she answered, I heard the faint murmur of traffic under her voice.

“How’d the meeting go?”

“She’s sitting right next to me,” she said lightly, a veiled warning to watch what I talked about. “I’m taking our new guest out on the town for a bit, showing her the sights.”

“When you’re done, I could use a hand. I found Melanie up in the bar, drinking her troubles away on a bogus driver’s license. I took her home.”

“Wait,” Caitlin said, “she was drinking in Winter? Out of all the places she could go, why there?”

“Probably because she wanted to get caught. It was a cry for help. I’m delivering. I’m gonna crash here tonight just to keep an eye on her, but she needs her mom. Any chance you could light a fire under Emma’s ass and get her back here? Don’t tell her about the bar, just…just let her know that I had the talk with Melanie, about what happened to Ben, and I think I smoothed things over a little.”

Melanie had more weight on her shoulders than any seventeen-year-old should ever have to deal with. I knew what that was like. Unlike me, though, she actually had a chance to make something of her life. I wasn’t sure which way she’d lean in the end, which of her parents she’d take after, and I really didn’t care. What mattered to me was that she knew she had choices, and she knew she was loved.

Everybody should have that.

The doorbell rang at six in the morning. I sat up from the couch with a start, rubbed the crust from my eyes, and stumbled toward the door. I thought Emma had come home, my sleep-addled brain not realizing that Emma probably had a key to her own house.

Caitlin stood on the doorstep, draped in black Christian Dior with a floppy-brimmed hat that made me think of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She gazed at me from behind a pair of dark glasses just a little too large for her face, her body silhouetted in the morning glow.

“You are way early for lunch,” I said, “but you look amazing.”

“Emma can’t get back until tonight,” she said, stepping past me into the foyer. “So I took the liberty of making some plans.”

An alarm clock whined from up the hall. Melanie’s bedroom door opened and she trudged out like one of the walking dead, with her blue hair tangled and her body draped in an oversized nightshirt that drooped past her knees. She turned, saw us, and froze.

Caitlin was Prince Sitri’s hound. To his subjects, that meant she was basically judge, jury, and executioner all rolled up in one. It was a bad sign when she showed up on your doorstep unannounced. Melanie’s gaze flicked toward me, with a what-did-you-tell-her? look on her face.

“It occurred to me,” Caitlin said, taking her glasses off and staring at Melanie, “that we haven’t been spending enough time together. We’re addressing that. Today.”

Melanie gulped and gestured vaguely toward the bathroom. “I, uh, I have to go to school.”

“Not today, you don’t. You’re home sick with a terrible flu. Might even last two days. Meanwhile, I have plans for you, young lady.”

“I’ll tear up the fake ID,” Melanie squeaked. “I’ll never do it again!”

Caitlin blinked, then nodded pleasantly.

“Well, yes, you will, but that’s not why I’m here. We have reservations at the Canyon Ranch SpaClub. Shiatsu massage, vitamin infusion facials, sauna, mani-pedi, and of course we’ll get our hair done. How does that sound?”

Melanie gaped. She fumbled for words, eventually coming up with, “That…sounds pretty okay.”

“Well, then, you’d best get showered and changed. Hop to it. Go on.”

Melanie vanished into the bathroom. Caitlin put her dark glasses back on and studied her fingernails.

“I know how to make someone relax,” she told me. “She’ll be a puddle of happy jelly by lunchtime.”

“You’re amazing, have I told you that lately?”

“I’m pretty okay,” she said.

“How did things go with our, ah, guest?”